DAY of PENTECOST

El Greco - Pentecost

• Acts 2:1-21 or Numbers 11:24-30  • 
• Psalm 104:24-34, 35b  • 
• 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 or Acts 2:1-21  • 
• John 20:19-23 or John 7:37-39

The Gospel for this Sunday, which ever alternative is chosen, is unusually brief. That is because our attention has to focus on the reading from Acts if we are to celebrate the powerful experience that the disciples underwent on Shavuot, a Jewish festival that occurs in late spring and commemorates God’s gift of the Ten Commandments.

The Christian festival which arose from that 1st century Shavout takes place fifty days after the Resurrection, hence the name ‘Pentecost’. Commonly regarded as ‘the Birthday of the Church’ it marks the moment at which, following Christ's Ascension the first Christians were inspired by the Holy Spirit in a way that  transformed them into His  Body on Earth. So to celebrate Pentecost is to claim this extraordinary privilege – to be the incarnation and enduring presence of Christ for all humanity. It is also an awesome responsibility, however, since with the privilege come spiritual dangers. Chief among these is the possibility that the way we exercise that privilege makes Jesus Christ an object of the world’s contempt or indifference rather than a figure of hope and veneration.

Descent of the Holy Spirit Icon (Ukraine)

Unhappily, this has often been the reality. Christians have so often been so divided, at odds with each other to the point of mutual persecution and slaughter, that the glorious commission given to the Apostles has very lain hidden behind a screen of intolerance, bigotry and narrow mindedness. And yet, it is this same fractured Church that God continues to entrust with the Gospel. Pentecost, accordingly, should be seen as an annual opportunity for real spiritual renewal. The image of wind invite us to spread our sails to a Holy Spirit that will blow us out of the doldrums into which we have fallen, while the Pentecostal fire is an invitation to burn much more brightly as the ‘lights of the world’.

In an alternative reading for this Sunday from the Book of Numbers, Moses laments the spiritual lethargy of the Israelites and cries “Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!". There could hardly be a more appropriate prayer for Pentecost.